


With Antlers of Lightning Crowned

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Childbirth, Lactation, Mpreg, Other, Spring Sprite AU, Unusual Parents, in a glade 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 00:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10776072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Parents can come in all manner of shapes. So can children.





	With Antlers of Lightning Crowned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> For Theseus, who inspires me on a near daily basis. Love you dearling. <3
> 
> Part of @HerbertBest's Spring Sprite AU, which is slowly consuming my life in the best way.

The heat of summer had come to the forest. Dan spent his days with gills and fins, swimming in the cool, clear waters, tail flashing silver in the bright summer sun as he leapt and raced against the trout. At night he would lay in the grass, counting the blinks of the fireflies and listening to the sounds of the owls and the faint squeaking of bats. Sometimes there was lightning leaping from cloud to cloud like deer bounding through the trees. Sometimes it rained, a welcome relief from the humidity and the heat.

Dan fell asleep in a clearing one night, four legged, long eared, waist to hooves and tail a deer. Rain fell, lightning flashed, thunder roared, coloring Dan’s dreams. In his dreams the storm came to him, surrounded him. There was wetness and warmth, light and heat, the crackle of electricity dancing through his nerves, down his spine as the storm entered him, filled him like a downpour fills a dry riverbed. His own orgasm woke him up, still panting and shaking in the grass, which was scorched slightly. He knew then that it hadn’t been a dream, or at least hadn’t been _just_ a dream. There was a life inside him. It was small still, and he didn’t know the shape of it exactly, but it was a life.

Dan smiled. He couldn’t quite reach to stroke his belly, not in the shape he had taken, but he would have if he could. “Hey there,” he said softly. “Hi little one. What are you going to be, hmmm?”

Above him the storm rumbled and murmured as if in answer, moving on towards the mountains.

*****

“You’re glowing.”

Dan looked down at his arms, because well, you never could tell, before looking up at Suzy. Her iron teeth flashed in the moonlight as she smiled, and her laugh was the trickle of water running through a deep cave. “I didn’t mean literally.” She stepped slowly toward him, careful that her iron hooves didn’t dig into the ground around her, or crush the little purple star shaped flowers that were growing in the clearing. The humans that had traipsed through earlier that day had not been so careful, and Dan had been coaxing the half broken stems into standing tall again when Suzy had appeared from the shadows. “Pregnant again?”

Dan felt himself blushing slightly as he smiled from where he was kneeling in the grass. “You can tell?”

“You have that look about you.” Suzy knelt carefully in the grass next to him. Her skin glimmered like silver ore in starlight, and a few peppered moths fluttered about her lazily. Several fireflies had gotten caught in her long hair, blinking in little staccato bursts. Dan reached up and gently untangled them, their tiny legs tickling his fingers. “Who was it this time?”

Dan unbent another broken stem, encouraging it softly, smoothing out the crushed petals. “I’m pretty sure it was that thunderstorm we had a few weeks ago.” Something fluttered low in his belly and he shifted slightly, long ears flicking back and forth. He hadn’t changed his shape since that night, just in case. It was easier, safer to stay in the shape you had been impregnated in, because you never could tell what would happen otherwise.

Suzy nodded, and there was something in her expression, some sort of longing. “Can I feel? Do you mind?”

“I don’t mind, let me just—“ Dan shifted again, trying to get more comfortable. “Okay, go ahead.”

Suzy reached out and gently stroked Dan’s belly. “Any idea what it’s going to be?”

Dan shook his head. “Could be anything. I mean, my parents were a mountain and a river, and I don’t look like either of them.”

Suzy cocked her head to one side, still stroking the fur of his belly. “I know mountains,” she said to him. “You have a mountain’s heart.”

*******

It was raining when Dan felt the first contraction, the sun still shining brightly in the sky as the rain pattered gently down. Dan wondered if his child had a sense of the dramatic.

There was pain. There was always pain, and a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of ecstasy. His tears mixed with the rain as time passed, as he panted with the effort of birth, the mess and the wonder of it, until finally something slid out of him and onto the wet grass. Dan lay there for a moment or two as fluids and other things left him as well, and then he was standing, legs shaking, turning around.

The baby fawn was the dark gray color of certain thunderclouds, spotted and striped with white. Their eyes, when they opened them, were the blue white of a lightning flash, and the air around the creature smelled of ozone. It was already standing, taking wobbly, shaky steps. It looked up at Dan and made a noise like rain falling on leaves. Dan felt himself grinning so hard that it almost hurt, his tears of joy mixing with the rain on his face.

“Hi there,” Dan said softly. “Look at you. Hi!”

The fawn made the water on leaves noise again as it wobbled over to Dan and began to nurse.

By the time the rain ended, parent and child were curled up together in the shelter of the trees, fast asleep.

*******

Summer was ending. Dan could feel it in his bones and his blood, feel the slight chill in the air creeping into the evenings, see the first subtle shading of orange and red on the leaves of the trees. The tiny fawn he had birthed at the beginning of summer was now almost as tall as Dan’s shoulder, and though they had grown they still leapt and pranced as they had when they were young. Sparks crackled across their fur from time to time, occasionally arching between their long ears.

Dan had taken many other shapes since his child had been weaned, but tonight even though he had two legs they were the legs of a deer, his long ears swiveling, white tail flicking anxiously. His smile had a touch of sadness to it as he heard thunder rumbling in the distance, saw his child raise their head and answer that thunder with a call of their own.

“Last thunderstorm of the season,” Dan said quietly. He watched his child leap and prance as the storm grew closer, the clouds grew darker. Lightning began to leap from cloud to cloud as if mimicking the child below. Rain began to fall steadily as the thunder grew closer, as the lightning flashed brighter. The child pranced over to Dan, nuzzling him, sparks dancing over their hide. Dan leaned down, breathing in the wild ozone smell of their child one more time, placing a kiss right between their ears, not minding the little shock of electricity that stung his lips.

“Love you,” Dan said softly. “Go on. Go well.”

Dan watched as the gray deer child pranced away from him, as they leapt through the raindrops, up into the clouds as the storm moved on to another part of the world, to someone else’s summer. He couldn’t help but cry, not bothering to hide his tears. Something in his chest felt suddenly empty. It ached.

“They grow up so fast.” Holly was next to him, her approach unheard over the storm. She looked up at the sky, her hair the silver green color of willow leaves, and then she looked at Dan. Without another word she opened up her arms and Dan leaned against her as if she were a tree and cried until he had no more tears.

******

The world went round again, as the world does. Spring gave way to summer, and it wasn’t long before the storms came round again. Dan stood in a clearing, prancing nervously on four cloven feet as the first raindrops fell. Lightning flashed close by, close enough to feel the heat of it, bright enough for Dan to shield his eyes. In front of him something crackled and made a sound like distant thunder and water on leaves.

The child had grown into a fine stag, tall and proud, dark gray as a thunderhead. Their eyes were still blue-white, matching their antlers, which glowed and crackled, throwing off sparks in the rain. They bounded up to Dan, tossing their head slightly, prancing with excitement. Dan laughed, having to reach up to throw his arms around their offspring’s neck.

“Oh look at you. You’ve gotten so big!” Dan breathed in the smell of ozone and wet animal and felt the small empty place in his chest fill up again. “I’m so proud of you.”

The storm above them rumbled.

“ _We’re_ so proud of you,” Dan amended.

Together, parent and offspring leapt through the rain, enjoying the first of many summer storms.


End file.
